Under the Baobab Tree

I headed West to the Hill Country. The Hill Country is Texas ranch land populated by long horn cattle, horses, live oaks, long yellow ranch grass, and some sort of horned creature that reminded me of Thompson's Gazelle from Southern Africa but which obviously must be something else. It's just my sort of country. It looks a lot like parts of the Spanish Plain, or Southern Africa, or parts of South Central California. Replace the live oaks with cork trees and you have Spain and Portugal; replace the live oaks with fig trees and you have the high veld in Southern Africa. Keep it pretty much the same but a little more populated and pretentious and you have South Central California. Wide open sky and long vistas, more animals then people, lots of wood and stone, no plastic. In fact, there's really a lot of stone. The hills in the Hill Country are yellow limestone ledges that have been eroded over the millennia. When the Germans and English pushed out on this frontier their cattle ate the long yellow grass and the wind blew away the very thin layer of soil that had taken millennia to develop and that had virtually no nutrients in it and what was left was huge ledges of yellow limestone and land covered with sinking territory covered in yellow grass. This is where the beautiful yellow Texas limestone comes from and from which so many beautiful Southern Texas building are made. Yellow Texas limestone and the long yellow grass and the live oak trees. That's the Hill Country. In the spring it is covered in the wildflowers that inspired Lady Bird Johnson.

Speaking of Lady Bird, one of my first stops was Johnson City. This little tiny town was founded by LBJ's ancestors and their original homestead is still there. LBJ's ancestors herded cattle and once a year would drive them up the Chisholm Trail to Kansas. When they arrived on their homestead, the closest town was Blanco which was a day's ride by horse away. Johnson City did not yet exist (obviously). Their homestead was a two room "dogtrot" wood cabin. Dogtrot cabins, I have learned, are basically two rooms separated by a covered alley wide enough for dogs to run through and in which dogs would lie in the hot summer. The Johnson settlement has one dogtrot cabin, two huge limestone barns (much bigger than the human habitations), and a cool room for storing perishables in the summer. THAT WAS IT. The next closest building was a day's ride away in Blanco. Can you imagine? And I was the only person there, which was fitting. The wind blew across the yellow grass and through the live oaks -- from the back of the dogtrot cabin they have preserved the view as it was in day's of yore -- just yellow cattle pastures as far as the eye can see. I said hello to two longhorns (their horns are very long) and found a horse, of all things, with whom I hung out for a while. The horse was very Zen and did a lot of sighing. I looked off towards the direction of Blanco, in the silent, sunny wind and thought about going that far for dry goods. Amazing. Especially because it had taken me all of 15 minutes to drive to Johnson City from Blanco.

Then I pressed on to the LBJ Texas White House. This national park was stunning -- orchards of huge pecan trees, several living history farms owned by the original LBJ neighbors, including a midwife who was in attendance at LBJ's birth, the meandering Pedernales River (which is Indian for flint stones -- I hummed the theme song to The Flintstones pretty much the whole time I was there). You can stand and look across the river at the Texas White House which is right there -- it seems amazingly close. Lady Bird lived there until she died, which must have been very strange to be right on top of the National Park dedicated to her husband. A little morbid. There I learned all about the German settlements in Texas. I had not realized that there were so many Germans here. Tons and tons of them. In fact, many towns in Hill Country are overflowing with biergartens and Main Streets are called Haupstrasses and there are Lutheran churches everywhere. I visited the living history farm and introduced myself to a family of sheep (ram, ewe and three little lambs chewing on yellow grass) and a family of very cute baby pigs. I also saw a real buffalo roaming around -- I kid you not. Again, I was the only one there. I listed to several LBJ speeches. What a tragic man. I sat on the banks of the Pedernales under the pecan trees in the yellow sun listening to the wind and looking at the live oaks and yellow grass and the Texas White House for quite some time. I sighed like the horse at the homestead. Very Zen.

Next stop was Fredericksburg (German) where I had lunch but otherwise did not linger because I did not care for it frankly and wanted desperately to drive through Luckenbach (also German). Luckenbach, Texas is a real place but I would not go so far as to call it a town. It is an eighth of a mile turnoff from the main road, right on the limestone ledges along a river (not sure which one). All it has is a camp site, a dance hall where I presume they play nothing but "Willie and Waylon and the boys," and an enormous feed mill that dwarfs everything else. It took me thirty seconds to tour Luckenbach but Hooray! I have been there! When I was a child in Guinea-Bissau we played that song endlessly on our little stereo, surrounded by the humid tropics, rotting mango trees and pigs dying in the road (literally). Lovely. Luckenbach, though limited, is better than Bissau.

Those were really the highlights of Hill Country -- I will spare you poetic elegies about the beauty of the land and the massive 1,000 acre ranches. You just have to go there yourself.

But I had one more mission which was to see The Alamo in San Antonio, no pun intended. I drove through a collection of beautiful Hill Country towns to get there and was very disappointed. San Antonio seemed like a big food court. The Alamo is probably a lovely site but when I was there it was mobbed with food court people. I felt that every bus in Texas had dropped its load there -- and the Alamo is really not very big so there wasn't room for us all. The Alamo is a "shrine" in Texas and you are supposed to take off your hat and be silent, but hardly any one complied. It was so packed I felt like I was in the Holocaust Museum, trudging along shoulder to shoulder with the masses. But I learned that Davy Crockett died at the Alamo which apparently everyone in America knew except me. Next time I will have to figure out how to have the State of Texas close the place to the public and give me a private tour. Probably have to pay them something to do that. Oh well. And San Antonio itself was remarkably dreary and depressing. I can think of no reason ever to go back there. Especially not after the uplifting scenery and inspiring history of the Hill Country.

Now I'm sitting in the sunny Four Seasons again, smiling, getting ready to go visit the Whole Foods headquarters here in Austin. Life is good.